Facebook Paper: 3 Facts

Facebook will launch a standalone news reader app on Feb. 3. Here's what you need to know.

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Facebook unveiled Thursday morning its highly anticipated news reader app called Paper, which combines content shared by your friends with news from a variety of publications. The app will be available for download on iOS devices in the US on Feb. 3.

Paper is the first app launched by Facebook Creative Labs, an initiative to develop and design new apps for phones. This is likely the first of many "new and engaging types of mobile experiences" that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to in its latest earnings call. Facebook reported Wednesday that it generates more than half of its advertising revenue from mobile.

Facebook's new focus on standalone apps and mobile is a natural and necessary next step for the social network, said Rebecca Lieb, industry analyst at Altimeter Group. They're goldmines for both user data and advertising dollars.

"Facebook is becoming more and more about news discovery: We've seen that when it recently launched Trending, for example, and Paper is a continuation of that on a mobile platform," Lieb said in an interview. "Paper looks like a play to both leverage the way people are using Facebook, which is on mobile and for news discovery, and obviously to monetize it." Paper will be ad-free when it launches on Monday, Facebook said, at least for now.

While Paper will launch ad-free, it's unlikely it will stay that way for long, Lieb said.

"We know Facebook is aggressively courting mobile advertisers, and advertising on editorial content is something that they're all comfortable with," Lieb said. "There's a high degree of customization on Paper, which will provide Facebook with more data about what its users are interested in and will help businesses better target their advertising."

Here's a preview of Paper, plus details about Facebook's newest app.

1. You choose your content topics. Much like a newspaper, Facebook's Paper app is made up of sections that you can add based on your interests. The first section in Paper is your News Feed, where you can browse photos, videos, and longer posts. You'll notice that the News Feed section on Paper is displayed differently from what you're used to on Facebook: The top half of the screen shows photos and videos, while the bottom half shows updates and links to content that your friends have shared, which you can swipe through.

More than 12 other sections are available for you to add to Paper. These include "Score" for sports news, "Headlines" for world news, "Cute" for animal stories, "Planet" for science and sustainability content, "Enterprise" for business news, as well as photography ("Exposure"), food ("Flavor"), and themed pages that change daily, called "Ideas."

2. It's more than an e-reader. While Facebook's new app is intended to help you discover new content, it also lets you share stories and post your own content to Facebook (and thus Paper) from the app.

Paper uses a WYSIWYG editor, which shows you exactly what your post looks like before you share it. For example, you won't have to worry about whether text or an image will appear cropped in previews, as it sometimes does on Facebook.

3. It's gesture-heavy. Maneuvering around Paper may take some getting used to: It requires learning to make a variety of gestures in the right places, such as where to swipe, tap, pinch, and tilt.

In Paper, images are shown in full screen. This means you need to tilt your device to browse images corner to corner. To flip through stories, swipe from right to left. Tapping one will unfold it to display in full-screen mode. Pinch the story to fold it back up and return to your Paper feed.

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I personally prefer a visual app like Hinto where I can pick out what I want to see, instead of being told what news to read by an algorithm. But I must admit, the video presentation of Paper is pretty impressive and the effects are very nice.

Twitter works differently than FB. At least I don't don't use Twitter in the same way. It's not just about social news curation. It's also about who you are sharing those news with, or if you are sharing at all.

Pulse is another good comparison, though I disagree that it should be viewed as a sign of concern or that the company feels threatened. They're competing. Facebook has been insanely successful at monetizing mobile, and this is another way to do just that.

Think of it this way: Paper is a news reader that gives you the option to view a version of your News Feed. Curating external content from news sites is at the heart of it -- some of this content may be shared by your friends, but other content will be based on topics you choose: sports, world news, science news, tech news, etc.

I'm not sure you can really compare the two -- Flipboard is probably the better comparison. Twitter is a firehose of information that, sure, you can manage with separate lists and feeds, but what you see is what you get, and if you miss it, it's gone. Facebook is using both algorithms and editors to resurface interesting content (we'll have to see how well that works). There's also the visual element -- Paper is designed to highlight rich media, whereas Twitter isn't.

The use of social media for a host of business purposes is rising. Indeed, social is quickly moving from cutting edge to business basic. Organizations that have so far ignored social - either because they thought it was a passing fad or just didn’t have the resources to properly evaluate potential use cases and products - must start giving it serious consideration.

Social media is critical in the age of digital business. How can IT help? First, work with the marketing team to set up social networking programs on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, at minimum. Then work to put social media sentiment analytics in place to measure success.